E3 2010: Halo: Reach -- Firefight's Five Biggest Changes

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It's a whole new ball game.

By Erik Brudvig

Firefight is back in Halo: Reach and Bungie is making some big changes. The core idea remains the same -- team up with up to three other friends and fight waves of Covenant invaders. After playing several different iterations of Firefight at a recent Microsoft event, I realized the script has been rewritten so drastically that the experience feels entirely different. Here are the five biggest changes being made to Firefight for Halo: Reach and how they make it a whole new ballgame.

Matchmaking Who didn't see this addition coming? Firefight was introduced in Halo 3: ODST, but you could only set up a game with people on your friend list. That made the mode rather useless for those out there that don't have a lot of friends as interested in Halo as they might be. In Halo: Reach, you're free to play with anybody online also looking for a partner.

Now what does this mean for the four player co-op campaign? Perhaps we'll finally see some matchmaking added there, too.

Wave Limits and Time Limits This is huge. In Halo 3: ODST, skilled players could go hours upon hours. There was no end and Firefight turned into a test of endurance. That's nice for some people, but it can be exhausting for others. This option is still available in Halo: Reach, but it isn't the default way to play.

If you hop into a quick Firefight game, you'll find the skull progression altered and only one set of Covenant waves. The games have a time limit and unlimited respawns turned on as well, which means a default Firefight game only lasts about 10 minutes. It feels more like a quick arcade game than a massive test of skill.

New Trailer! More Info HereThe Toys New toys are on the way which shouldn't be any surprise. Armor abilities, including the new Shield Drop that plops down an area-effect healing bubble shield, are in. New weapons like the Target Locator that calls in air strikes are there for your amusement. Little weapon drops come falling from the sky, offering powerful weapons to take on the new Covenant AI variants that come streaming in. Nothing special, right?

Well, don't dismiss all of the new toys as nothing more than expected additions. Jet packs alone will completely change the way a team of Spartans should approach Firefight. The new guns and abilities are powerful, so much so that they made the default Firefight mode seem rather easy on Heroic difficulty.

Customization Of course, if you don't want to play a short game, Bungie isn't forcing you to. In fact, they're not forcing you to do anything in Firefight. You can edit just about any option, tweak any setting, and even set up your own skull modifiers and weapon loadouts. You can then save all of your custom options, slap them in your file share and let the world play your creation. It's like having the freedom of Forge, without the map editing tools.

Though I wouldn't rule out Forge options in Firefight just yet. Bungie seems like they may have a few tricks up their sleeve yet.

Rocketfight This is one such custom variant of Firefight that Bungie had on hand (the other was Generator Defense, a tweaked version of what many of us played in the multiplayer beta). The game is played just like the default Firefight mode, only every loadout comes with a rocket launcher and ammo is unlimited. It is awesome.

Jet packs and rocket launchers are such a natural fit that I don't know how they didn't come together in a Halo game sooner.